What a way to go. The coffin was placed on a...

LAST RITES.

July 4, 1986

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS — LAST RITES. What a way to go. The coffin was placed on a raft decorated with flowers and gifts. Accompanied by canoes, barges, pleasure craft and a police boat with its flag at half mast, the raft floated down the Amstel River, past 1,000 spectators on the banks and to a cemetery just outside Amsterdam. The sendoff was for Walter C. Gluck, 57, an artist and eccentric known as ''King of the Hippies.'' A Bulgarian and a former professional photographer in the United States, he was a tourist attraction in the 1960s when the Dutch capital was called ''Magic Center of the World'' because of its counterculture. Most of the hippies departed in the 1970s. Gluck stayed and stuck with his bizarre activities that included going barefoot at all times, making clocks and watches run backwards, living on the Amstel in a jerry built structure of rafts and barges and taking a daily dip in the polluted river. He drowned last week while trying to enlarge his living quarters.